Now that the Little Wonder is all but finished it is time to drag another engine out for a make over. This time it is a Ronaldson and Tippett Astral NA this is an aircooled engine circa mid 1940's.

This should be a straight forward restoration, at least that's what I thought before I got into it. I made a start on it today, a wet day is always a good day to to restore an engine, I removed the tinware first. I am going to have to learn some new skills here as the tinware has had a hiding and is not in great shape, so is put aside while I think about it.

Next issue I found is that the pulley assembly was held on with two set screws and both have been broken off at the surface. This means the flywheel can't come off. I am not sure what I will do about that. At the moment I see two options. one is to leave it on the crankshaft. As I plan to paint the engine this will cause issues with both cleaning down and painting. Although being inside the cowling it may not matter much. the other option is to try to weld a nut on to the remainder of the set screws. this usually works well but I prefer to have more of the screw showing. drilling them out is not an option as they are under the fan part of the flywheel and not accessible.
Either way the crankshaft can come out, and I have done that.

I dismantled the engine and was very pleased to find the internals are in very good shape, the mains are timkin bearings and are perfect, this reduces the reasons for the flywheel to be removed. The big end and gudgen have no sign of movement so the bore and rings are usable with very little wear. The crankcase has the usual layer of sludge but I think everything will clean up well.

The magneto will require some work, it is stiff to turn and will have to be dismantled. that can wait. I believe the engine has never been outside so I hope it won't take too much to get a spark from it.

In between a lot of other jobs I am well on to completion of the NA Ronnie.

I was able to weld nuts on to the remains of the set screws in the pulley. this enabled me to get the pulley off. Then I could get pinch bolt out of the flywheel remove it and get the crankshaft out. All the internals are in good order and can be reused.

This made it easy to clean it all up and get the flaky paint off ready for priming. Because the tinware was in poor shape leaving it unpainted wasn't an option. While the paint was original it was not the R and T green. The engine obviously been part of some equipment. I decided to match the paint that was on it. So after getting the valves reseated ground and lapped in it was all assembled. It did have good compression but something was wrong with the valve timing. Some head scratching and on opening up the engine found the timing marks all lined up, so off came the head and after carefully studying of the valve sequence reveled the inlet valve was too long. This may have came about with the reseating. About three mm was taken off and it came right.

Next was the tinware. I had to learn some new tricks to get it all presentable. I got it all back into shape and with the help of some bog it actually came up not too bad when it was painted.

I have made a wooden base and a crankhandle and I still have to make a gauze screen and fit the final cover over the flywheel.

The magneto was freed up and seemed to produce a good spark. but it wasn't good enough to fire the engine, the magnets are weak with very little flux, so it is away to get sorted out.

The magneto was sent away for a recondition. It turned out the coil was good so it was re-magnetized and a new condenser and bearings fitted.
I had some trouble getting the valve timing right and it turned out one of the valve stems was longer than the other, 3 mm off the long one sorted that, then was the problem of getting the spark timing right . With the help of a friend to watch the sequence. I couldn't do it all by my self, then after some adjustment we got that right. I had already rechecked the cam shaft timing marks and could not get it to run. Once everything was set up and a few minutes of cranking it fired up and then it was only a matter of learning where to set the jet for starting. It was inclined to flood but we soon had it running good.

There are still some small jobs to do on it like making the air cleaner and making and fitting the mesh cover for the flywheel then it is one more off the list.